Vriska Serket
Vriska Serket, also known by her Trollian handle , is one of the trolls. She was the eighth troll to be introduced, which also refers to her theme and obsession with the number eight. Her handle relates to her in two main ways. One, , refers to her interest in and fascination for spiders. The part of the handle most likely represents her power to have a grip on someone's mind, or control it. Her associated zodiac sign is Scorpio (♏) and her horns are shaped like a pincer and a stinger. Etymology "Vriska" was suggested by Terin. "Serket" was suggested by Chin Music. Vriska is a shortening of "Vrishchika", the Hindi name for Scorpio, or could be related to "Vṛścika" the Sanskrit word for scorpion, but could also refer to Kalpavriksha, a wish-fulfilling tree below the fourth chakra according to Zentra Yoga. This tree is said to fulfil both positive and negative wishes, again corresponding with the duality of Vriska's personality. Her name could also be a reference to the Planescape: Torment character Vrischika. Both characters are bossy, winged, have travelled throughout several universes, and are associated with the color blue. Her surname is taken from "Serket", the Egyptian goddess of healing stings and bites, and also the personification of the scorpion. It means both "(she who) tightens the throat", a reference to paralysis caused by scorpion stings, and "(she who) causes the throat to breathe", meaning that Serket was one who could cure scorpion stings and the effects of other poisons such as snake bites. Serket was conflictingly associated with stings or bites and with the cures to such maladies, mirroring the duality of Vriska's personality - she alternates between seriously injuring other trolls and helping them, or at least attempting to do so. Biography Pre-Hivebent When she was younger, Vriska found Mindfang's journal in a chest delivered to Alternia by a meteorite, and used it to locate her Fluorite Octet. Vriska plays Flarp both out of enjoyment and to procure food for her Lusus, which feeds on young trolls. Her Flarp character is her ancestor, . Mindfang has gained all the levels available to the Petticoat Seagrift class. All the levels. All of them. Mindfang, being a pirate with a hook for a hand, resembles Captain Hook, much as Tavros's character, Pupa Pan, resembles Peter Pan. The Fluorite Octet, named after a mineral resembling a d8 and the number eight, is also a play on the final words of Captain Hook in the original play of Peter Pan, which was "Floreat Etona," a Latin phrase from England where Captain Hook was schooled. She had frequent pirate themed Flarping sessions with Eridan most likely inspired by their ancestors' rivalry. On at least one occasion, Vriska and Terezi formed a Flarp team, 'Team Scourge', and faced off against Tavros and Aradia's 'Team Charge'. Vriska's actions in one particular Flarp session set off the cycle of revenge that leads to a number of catastrophic events for several trolls. *Vriska, acting as Tavros's Clouder, uses her mind powers to make him jump off a cliff, leading to his paralysis from the waist down. Aradia and Terezi are distracted by and unable to intervene. *Seeking revenge for Tavros's injury, Aradia summons the ghosts of trolls whom Vriska fed to her lusus to haunt her. *To get back at her, Vriska uses her mind control powers to control Sollux, forcing him to ingest mind honey and cause his psychic eye beams to be let loose . He then is controlled to go to Aradia's hive and kill her. *Terezi then takes matters into her own hands by informing of Vriska's possession of one of his Magic Cue Balls. Infuriated, blows up the Cue Ball, taking out Vriska's seven-pupiled eye and left arm as well as the tactical advantage she had with the Cue Ball. *To get back at her, Vriska uses a : she first mind controls Tavros, then uses his animal communion ability to control Terezi's Lusus, forcing it to tell Terezi to go outdoors and stare into the Alternian sun, blinding her. Since few trolls are able to withstand the sunlight, Vriska may have expected Terezi to wander blind and lost until she died of exposure or at the hands of terrifying monsters. Hivebent Vriska is first seen in the bottom right corner of , but she is not fully revealed until Hivebent. Her left arm is robotic and was created for her by Equius Zahhak after she loses her real arm. Equius is her neighbor, and after an accident caused by him, Vriskas' lusus is crushed by large rocks. Vriska ends the lusus' pain by . She commissioned to Equius a soulbot for Aradia as a way to make amends with her, but he enters the game before Vriska can get the present. When she talks to Aradia about, she says Vriska was never supposed to be part of the Blue Team and kicks her off. Vriska ends playing in the Red Team, because Karkat needed a troll with her abilities to exile the Black Queen. The Queen later ironically becomes her exile, and uses Vriska and Terezi to exile Jack. She is Tavros' server player and helps him explore his planet, but eventually gets bored and sends him to LOMAT. The two explore her planet together until Aradia, now in her soulbot, finally confronts her and leaves Vriska almost dead, ending the revenge circle. The aftermatch is Vriska making Tavros carry her to the quest coccon and, after letting Tavros decide her fate, ascending to god tier. At some point Vriska killed her denizen. She does the final blow to the Black King and, as the trolls go claim their ultimate reward, Jack Noir appears and Aradiabot transports the trolls into hiding in the same meteor Karkat had created them, where they find a computer lab. Post-Hivebent Vriska contacts John Egbert through Trollian. Initially, she attempts to psychically manipulate him through her computer. After her first attempt fails, she tries harder and manages to wake him from his sleep. Upon learning that Terezi has already assisted John, she sets out to . Vriska proceeds to offer quite a bit of assistance to him, reminding him to help Jade enter The Medium, explaining aspects of Sburb, and offering to send him maps of his Land, among other things. Nevertheless, her antagonistic tendencies show through in that she misleads John about her real name, first suggesting that of her Flarp character and later telling him that it's . Karkat implies that she flirts with John as a means to compete with Terezi. It turns out that Vriska is the reason for a lot of major events in the kids' session. She was responsible for Jade's narcolepsy. She makes John fall asleep before he is about to prototype Jade's kernelsprite with a doll. She wanted to be responsible for the creation of Bec Noir, because she thinks that she is going to be the one to kill him. She also controls their Courtyard Droll to lead the Draconian Dignitary to Rose's MEOW journal, and in the process kill a doomed timeline Dave, allowing Bec to be created in the first place. About an hour after Aradiabot exploded, Vriska is seen engaging Tavros in a fight, as Tavros wanted to kill Vriska when she revealed she was paradox responsible for creating Bec Noir. She taunts him with his sawed-off legs and Tavros charges at Vriska, trying to kill her. Vriska then proceeds to take his weapon mid-charge, and stab him through the chest with his own lance, casting the body down into the abyss where Terezi later finds it. Though Vriska herself isn't actually seen, Terezi smells a trail of special stardust, belonging to the wings of a certain mischievous fairy. It is obvious to Terezi that Tavros' murder is connected to Vriska, but conducts a full investigation nonetheless. Terezi later suspects Vriska of murdering Kanaya and Feferi as well, and sets off to confront her. .]] Some time after, Vriska contacts John and leads him to his quest bed, where he is stabbed by Jack and ascends to god tier. She later on goes to confront Eridan, and as they are about to fight, Gamzee makes an appearance. Both seem surprised to see him, and while they're preparing for a three-way showdown, Kanaya turns up. After kicking Gamzee over the cliff, the enraged rainbow drinker proceeds to punch Vriska in the face and saw Eridan in half. These events seem to have inspired in her. Vriska goes to the meteor's rooftop, talks to John for the last time and gets ready to go fight Jack. Terezi confronts and accuses her of the murders of all of the dead trolls and Gamzee. After hearing the story, Vriska attempts to tell Terezi the truth about the trolls' deaths, leading to Terezi's x3 facepalm combo. At some point, Terezi flipped her scratched coin, telling Vriska that if it landed on heads Vriska would , but if it landed on the scratch she would . Terezi was intentionally misleading in her description - we were meant to believe that ing meant Vriska would go to Bec Noir, but really, meant that she would live and meant she would die. Both of them were aware of this. After the coin flipped, it landed on scratch - because of Vriska's influence. Terezi prepares to stab Vriska through her turned back, but at first doesn't go through with it. However, Terezi, using her powers as Seer of Mind, sees the disastrous consequences of letting Vriska live - She would have foiled the troll's hideout to Bec Noir, leading to their death. Terezi proceeds to stab Vriska in the back, and she has a Just death. It is unknown if she is struck with a perma-death due to Slick's interference with 's grandfather clock. After Death In the dream bubbles, she meets a John from the timeline he was killed by meeting his denizen early. They date for some time, but the relationship fails and they break up, remaining friends until the alternate John was double killed by . She is later wandering through a desert until coming across Andrew Hussie, who proceeds to propose marriage to Vriska; unfortunately for him, she punches him out in disgust. Gamzee preserves her body until arriving in the post-scratch kids' session, where he prototypes Vriska and Tavros' bodies in Jane's sprite resulting in the birth of Tavrisprite. This fusion is short-lived and Tavrisprite destroys itself because of how the two sides are impossible to reconcile. Vriska and Tavros reappear on the bubbles, where she apologizes for killing Tavros and convinces him to help fuck things up with her. After hearing legends about an ancient weapon hidden in the Furthest Ring supposedly capable of killing , she and Tavros decide to find it. Unfortunately, because the Ring is an infinite void with no fixed points in space, all maps of it are totally black and feature no reference points. This problem is solved when begins to fracture reality by destroying dream bubbles, causing the cracks to appear on the maps and allowing Vriska and Tavros to continue their hunt. In order to reduce the amount of time spent searching, she plans to get other ghosts to pretend that they are searching for Calliope; would then attack their dream bubbles and allow Vriska to see more of the map. At some point, John arrives in their dream bubble and meets her in person for the first time. John dicovers she is dead and they talk of the plans to stop . The conversation is abruptly ended when Meenah interrupts them to criticize Vriska's idea and throws her trident at John, waking him. Enraged, Vriska challenges Meenah to a duel, with both agreeing that whoever wins will get to use all available troll ghosts for their own anti- plan. Vriska wins the duel, and begins her treasure hunting plan. She travels the furthest ring on a ship along with Tavros, Meenah, Aranea, Aradia, Sollux, Feferi and Nepeta. Before finally finding the treasure, she meets up with John again, who claims having the Ring of Life. However, John is hesitant to give her the ring, now believing that she is dangerous. Most of her crew also depart from the ship before the destination. After finding the treasure, John sticks his hand on it, suddenly teleporting away. Aranea manages to get the ring and comes back to life, reducing even more the party size. Meenah and Vriska then discuss how they're going to put forth their plan without Aranea, and Vriska reveals that Aranea was controlling most of the ghosts, and without her they don't see how it'll be possible. The two of them decide to ditch the plan altogether and later they begin to pursue a relationship, leading to the most meaningless moment seen of paradox space. Despite John's retcons creating a new timeline in which Vriska is alive, this version of Vriska still exists. She and Meenah meet the post-retcon version of Vriska at some point during the meteor journey. This version of Vriska, referred to as (Vriska) by this point forward, continues her relationship with Meenah, until Meenah ends the relationship when they cross paths with the alive Vriska yet again and she leaves (Vriska) alone. She later walks around a path of memories with Terezi until she reunites the version of Terezi who died in the aftermath of GAME OVER. They embrace and hold hands as they watch the cracks in paradox space get worse and worse. New Timeline In the new retconned timeline, John zaps to the meteor and follows Terezi's most important instruction listed on her scarf, before Terezi would kill her. After John leaves, she in confusion. Because of that, she traveled with the others on the meteor on the three-year trip to the B2 session. Vriska's actions on the timeline are numerous: her simply being alive avoid a lot of guilt and depression that Terezi underwent pre-retcon, preventing her kismesissitude with Gamzee and regrettably getting her eyes healed, and Vriska also puts her foot down to Rose's drinking problem. Vriska and Terezi crack down the code for John's Dad's wallet, the last scarf instruction he did not follow with, and make one to later captchalogue Earth. She retrieves Aradia's timetravelling gear and on the new session she travels back in time, like Gamzee did in the old timeline, to prototype the kids kernelsprites creating Tavrosprite and a new Arquiusprite. Back in the 'present', as a surprise factor Vriska puts Jade to sleep when she would have confronted the meteor crew and leads a heist to free Jake and Roxy from Derse's prison. Roxy ends accidentally killed by Jane, and so Vriska puts her to sleep. She also about the threats of this session. Vriska is later seen with everyone else on the victory platform. She participates in some conversations, then explains to everyone the threats to be neutralized and allows everyone to decide who will take on who (except for reserving some people to specific roles). After that, she uses Roxy's Appearifier Rifle to bring Dirk immediately to the victory platform with everyone else, and then she hops through a fenestrated wall to the Furthest Ring by taking the power supply with her and breaking its connection, saying that she will now go confront . In the Furthest Ring, she runs into her alternate self and Meenah once again, and immediately berates her alternate self, who wonders how her alive self can be so horribly rude. Vriska takes the juju and convinces Meenah to leave with her. She contacts the kids one last time to have Tavrosprite merge with God Cat and puts him to sleep, neutralizing the threat. She and Meenah discuss plans for how to kill until they run into pre-retcon Tavros, who amassed a massive army of ghosts without any mind powers. Tavros gives her the command as the new leader of the army. In Collide, Vriska strifes with Andrew Hussie when he says he wants to "kill everyone" and after a short battle defeats him. In Act 7, Vriska faces with her army and unleashes the juju, activating a final attack that launches into the event horizon of the black hole collapsing Furthest Ring. What becomes of Vriska and the Ghost Army is uncertain, but it's possible that she was ultimately killed in the very same black hole that was used to defeat once and for all. Personality and Traits Vriska is, more often than not, a huge bitch. She gets easily bored, makes shady deals with people, does horrible things to her friends, and then slams herself because nobody likes her or - even worse - hates her enough. Much like her lusus, a massive spider, Vriska often , even going as far as Tavros, blinding Terezi, and killing Aradia. Vriska believes that bad things constantly happen to her because she has terrible luck. Kanaya and suggest that her own behavior is more likely the cause - for example, she constantly steps on d4's only because she leaves them all over the floor instead of tidying up. She also seems to hold some degree of distaste towards her own blood color, mockingly referring to it as - just another thing for her to blame her problems on. On other occasions, though, Vriska holds herself in high regard - she often brags about her exploits in Flarp, or just about herself in general. Vriska is something of an apocalypse buff. She loves to make doomsday devices and is even sometimes asked to make them for others. One particular customer - Eridan - is an especially powerful and influential member of the Nautical Aristocracy for whom she such a device in exchange for his collusion in her Flarp campaigns. While she sees herself as a great manipulator, it seems that she is often manipulated herself, as clearly evidenced in 's with her. Although she would loathe to admit it, she envies Terezi a great deal because of Terezi's ability to manipulate people without the use of psychic abilities. This could be a possible motivator for Vriska, as she attempts to trick, deceive and backstab nearly every other troll - perhaps as a way to prove herself in Terezi's view or even in her own. When another troll calls her out on using mind powers, she either denies it to the point of absurdity or throws a tantrum. She was responsible for putting John to sleep before he could prototype one of the Distinguished Houseguests (which was coincidentally a blue doll missing an eye and an arm, similar to herself and Jack). Because of this, she believes herself to be responsible for Jack Noir's fourth prototyping, and thus his attack on the trolls' session, and claims to have intentionally done so as she wants to be the one to kill him. She tries to justify herself by claiming that it had to happen to prevent a doomed timeline. Although since avoiding this event was one of the few possible between-universe travel paradoxes, instead of just a time paradox, it is unclear whether it would have caused a doomed timeline, or something else entirely. According to Karkat and Aradia though, paradox space forces these events to be unavoidable. Despite all her negative traits, she does have a softer, more benevolent side. She was genuinely upset when her plan to reconcile with Aradia failed, and she also has admitted to John that she felt bad about killing Tavros and that even though her methods were more than questionable she did genuinely try to help him get stronger. Between Tavros and John, she's shown a bit of a habit of trying to train people up the Echeladder. She also mentions to John that one of the reasons she wants to fight Jack Noir is to protect her friends, even for killing them after in a doomed timeline. After killing Tavros, Vriska admits to John that she . According to troll culture, she had every right to kill him, and claims she can't tell the other trolls how she feels out of fear of seeming weak. She seems to have always felt bad about ending up as screwed up as she did as a result of troll culture, and laments how much better humans have it. However, this is more remorse towards herself, rather than guilt for any of her other atrocities, most likely because she despises her own existence as a troll, to the point of saying troll society was better off dead. She also willingly admits that there is a good chance she will die if she fights Jack Noir, but considers Jack being stopped far higher priority than her own life. She seems to have lost some of her faith in having all the luck, but decides she has to go after Jack regardless, seeing her fight will have to mean something, and relying on luck, instead of inner strength and bravery, would be meaningless. The version of Vriska who died on the meteor became notably more relaxed and passive after her brief prototyping and the betrayal of the dancestor. She ultimately loses a lot of her ambition, instead becoming more willing to appreciate the ones she loves, instead of constantly trying to steal the spotlight. Post-retcon Vriska views her alternate self as an absolute disappointment. She possesses mind control abilities, allowing her to take control of some characters and making humans sleep/wake up. Tavros, Sollux (half of the time) and Karkat are vulnerable to her powers, and Gamzee was controlled by her dancestor. Aradia, Terezi, and Equius are known to be immune. Animals are also susceptible to her influence when she uses Tavros' psychic powers to control them. Some Incipisphere inhabitants (Prospitians, Dersites, and Consorts) are also vulnerable. Vriska has vision eightfold - her right eye can "focus" to have some sort of x-ray vision. She is seen using this power channeling her powerful eyesight through her customized red lens to look through her Magic Cue Ball. She is also supposedly able to read minds, but has never successfully demonstrated this ability, aside from a brief reference to mind reading the Consorts of LOSAZ. Aranea has demonstrated the ability to detect emotions, but she lived 3 sweeps longer than Vriska did and may have figured out that skill over that time. Relationships Vriska burns bridges with practically every other troll, in particular through Flarp as mentioned above. After John enlightened Vriska regarding the joys of Con Air, she immediately developed a crush on Nicolas Cage. She keeps a marble bust and several of his film posters behind locked doors. Lusus/Kernelsprite Vriska's lusus is a gigantic spider, the second largest lusus of the trolls. The lusus subsists on a diet of young trolls and is always hungry. Vriska uses her Flarp sessions to procure more food for her Lusus. This grim obligation provides a possible explanation for many of Vriska's negative personality traits. Vriska that she dislikes her lusus, probably because it requires so much sustenance, which could imply that her basic reason for manipulating so many people is merely to keep up with her lusus's eternal hunger. Were she to not feed her lusus, she would die of starvation, and without one, she would be culled. Later on, she admits to John that this is all true. She and her Lususprite avoided each other throughout most of the game. Following the failed activation of Vriska's doomsday device, her lusus is unfortunately , forcing Vriska to euthanize her with the Guillotine De La Marquise, a dice technique selected at random out of a potential 16,777,216, which is eight to the eighth power. Tavros Nitram Vriska claims to hate Tavros for no particular reason she can describe. Acting as his server player in Sgrub, she intentionally builds his hive up with stairs instead of ramps, demanding he find a way up without use of his wheel chair and apologize for being crippled. When he refuses, she shakes him in his wheel chair. Karkat theorizes that she has caliginous feelings for him, but it'd never work out because of Tavros' inability to actually hate people and Vriska's generalized hate towards everything. Indeed, Vriska alternately tries to antagonize and Tavros and fails miserably at both. They eventually seem to come to an understanding of sorts, as Vriska contacts him from the near future and is unusually polite to him. However, their feelings seemed to have regressed when Tavros fails to kill her on her Quest bed while she's dying, and abandons her to a slow and painful death from blood loss. Things only seem to worsen during post-hivebent until finally Tavros attacks Vriska and is by her. However it has been seen that the two of them have started up an unconfirmed matespritship after their deaths, Tavros even intending to propose to her. He eventually leaves her, though, due to constant conflicts and still feeling bullied by her, and he as he flies away from the treasure hunt. Tavros would later return with a renewed ghost army (one he had fromed through the power of friendship, instead of mindcontrol), finally proving his worth and sending Vriska into a shock. Following the events of the retcon, Vriska prototyped Tavros in a kernalspite and later has him merge with GCat in an effort to passify the dangerous animal, leaving Gcatavrosprite allergic to himself. He seems to be fine in the credits, however. Terezi Pyrope Karkat refers to Vriska and Terezi as the "Scourge Sisters," likely referring to their team in Flarp which may have extended to their everyday lives. In the same conversation, Karkat states that Vriska has always been jealous of Terezi for her ability to manipulate others without . Vriska sees her former team mate Terezi as her rival, but also tries to stay friends with her. She was shocked when Terezi actually killed her, because she thought she would not be able to go through with it. Despite giving her a cold shoulder ever since the Flarp incident Terezi actually cared for Vriska quite a bit. She feels some regret about killing Vriska, even though she knows it was the right thing to do in order to protect her other friends from death. In fact Vriska's death at her hands is one of the reasons she seems to spiral out of control during the trip on the meteor. Vriska does care for Terezi, seeming horrified and furious when Jack Noir returns to her with the bodies of her and Karkat in the alternate timeline. In the new timeline created by John's retcons where John saved Vriska before Terezi could kill her, Vriska seems to have spent most of her time with Terezi during the three-year meteor journey. confirms that they are now moirails. John Egbert Vriska is John's patron troll throughout the events of Act 5 Act 2, and the two have a somewhat complicated relationship. Vriska sees Terezi as a rival, and tries to get John to compete with Dave, who is guided by Terezi. This seems to have partially worked, as future Dave implies that future John has become extremely powerful. Vriska's attachment to John may have something to do with his similarities to Tavros, as he and John share the same aspect. Vriska later calls John , a nickname she often uses for Tavros. She also says John looks totally hot when he wears Vriska's custom clothes for him. After Tavros' death, and after she tricked John into dying to achieve god tier status. Vriska admits to John that he is special to her, and holds his view of her in higher respect than any of the other trolls, the 'second most heartfelt feelings-off in paradox space'. It is unclear how deep her feelings for John really are, though she has apparently waxed red for him, and unwittingly at his imminent kissing of Rose. She also dated an alternate self of John for a while, but things didn't work out. She still considers Alpha John a friend and seems deeply hurt when he considers that bringing her back to life might be a bad idea due to her perceived dangerous nature. John later admits to Roxy that he might actually hate Vriska. However, John appears to have softened his view on Vriska once he prevents her death, and is willing to commend Vriska for her efforts in preparing the group for their final battle, possibly indicating that he has forgiven her, or vented out his frustrations towards her when he knocked her out.. Aradia Megido Vriska behaves in a similar manner towards Aradia as she does to Tavros. She is angry that she can't make amends by relaying Equius' Aradiabot gift to her and absolutely pissed at the fact that Aradia holds no ill will towards her and is not even the slightest bit perturbed by her bad behavior - that is, until Aradia receives her robot body with prosthetic emotions, goes to the Land of Maps and Treasure, and . After Aradia reaches godtier and Vriska's death, she and Vriska appear to be on better terms. Karkat Vantas The relationship between Vriska and Karkat is one of the oddest among the trolls. While Karkat's initial reactions were to hate her because of her being a vile backstabber, their relationship changed over time. As the two most outspoken trolls among the twelve, the self proclaimed leader and the self proclaimed best fighter, they often talk on equal terms about winning the game, mostly squabbling with each other while enjoying it. Vriska often takes pleasure flirting with Karkat while Karkat continuously insults her much to her joy, and Karkat continuously tries to get a rise out of her while giving her relationship advice and criticisms, causing Vriska to act bored and say , cementing her tomboy personality. Since they both have traits similar to John, it's natural that they drive each other up the wall. Nepeta Leijon Her relationship with Nepeta is largely made up of failed attempts at friendship. Vriska enjoys roleplaying with Nepeta, yet since Vriska scares her, she refuses to when she does 'mean things' during roleplay, which makes Vriska unusually sad, possibly because Terezi also does relatively mean or morbid things while roleplaying with Nepeta, yet she still likes it. Nepeta also seems horrified at the thought of Karkat and Vriska becoming matesprits, due to her flushed-crush on Karkat. Kanaya Maryam She does appear to hold a degree of affection for Kanaya, one of the few trolls that'll give her the time of day. Vriska regards her as both a and a . At the start of Hivebent, Kanaya was Vriska's moirail, although Kanaya seems to desire something a bit redder and is visually shaken when Vriska attempts to seduce Tavros. In the Veil, she notes that Kanaya had been acting aloof towards her, and expresses a desire to mend their friendship, complaining about how she misses the others fussing over her; however, she is still totally ignorant as to why Kanaya is acting that way towards her. She believes that Kanaya had a crush on Tavros, and helped amputate his legs as vengeance for him "going for" Vriska. It would seem that after Kanaya's return as a rainbow drinker and her subsequent ass-kicking of the 3x Showdown Combo, her redder feelings for Vriska are Following Vriska's death/prevented death through the retcon, Vriska and Kanaya appear to have put aside any feelings for one another, largely due to Kanaya's relationship with Rose. Vriska admits to being amused by Kanaya's refusal to hide the fact that she is very content with her relationship. Equius Zahhak Vriska's behavior seems to be very similar to that of her neighbor Equius. Both have addictions to breaking a specific thing: Vriska's breaks "Black Oracles" (Magic Eight Balls) and Equius destroys bows, which he attempts to use but ends up breaking as a result of his freakish strength. They both comment that the addiction borders on being fetishistic and that addictions are a powerful thing. Not only that, they collaborate on a gift for Aradia, the Soulbot, which they claim to intend to deliver jointly. Both plan on backstabbing each other eventually and presenting the gift as their own. Interestingly, and unlike many of the other trolls, Equius doesn't hold any particular grudge against Vriska and seems to consider her deceptive, violent demeanor to be socially appropriate, even her to harass their lower-caste friends. Also, he does not appear harbor any ill feelings towards Vriska's murder of his love interest, Aradia, possibly meaning that he is glad that Aradia was killed since it gave him the opportunity to resurrect her with a more noble blood color. Vriska appears to become somewhat infatuated by Equius when he becomes prototyped with Dirk's auto-responder. Eridan Ampora Further complicating matters is Vriska's status as Eridan's former kismesis. Unlike Terezi, who (sometimes) had to be tricked into murdering other trolls through deception, Eridan wholeheartedly supported Vriska's reign of terror. Eridan benefited from this arrangement, of course, as he could slaughter the lusus of defeated trolls in order to feed them to Feferi's lusus. He seems to take his kismesissitude with Vriska rather seriously and is anxious about his performance in the role. Conversely, Vriska's feelings on the matter are largely unknown, though it is likely that any feelings she had/has for Eridan are overshadowed by her feelings for Tavros. After the trolls fled into the Veil, Vriska tells Eridan that she no longer has any interest in a black relationship with him. Meenah Peixes Prior to the retcon, Vriska and Meenah were initially rivals due to their mutually rambunctious and abrasive personalities. However after dueling it out and likely some pacification from Vriska's dancestor, they quickly become better acquainted, and the two join forces to lure through the Furthest Ring and form an army to fight him. After Aranea breaks away from the group in an effort to take over the B2 session, both Vriska and Meenah were left despondent and mortified over their mutual friend's betrayal, losing interest in her. Their relationship improves from there and eventually transitions into a flushed engagement. However Meenah, seeing how this version of Vriska has changed, starts growing bored of her and her own existence as a ghost. When the Vriska born of the new-retcon comes to collect the Ulitmate Weapon, Meenah takes the chance to break it off with the pre-retcon Vriska and follow her elder, alive counterpart in their renewed effort to defeat once and for all. Meenah later shows some interest in the post-retcon Vriska, considering this version's comparatively advanced age as being . Post-retcon Vriska appears to show similar interest after Meenah does a final speech to inspire the renewed ghost army. Aranea Serket Vriska initially had a very positive relationship towards her dancestor, largely due to their shared admiration for Aranea's post-scratch counterpart, Mindfang. The two shared a very sisterly bond and started being influenced by the other's behavior, with Vriska taking a greater interest in storytelling and Aranea becoming more daring and confident. However, their relationship was far from perfect, as Aranea grew frustrated with the teasing she received from Vriska and Meenah, and was thoroughly fed up with being long dead and irrelevant. Once Aranea learned of the Ring of Life, and its mysterious ability to restore life to the dead, she begun hatching a plan to take over the B2 session, use her advanced powers as a Sylph of Light (with help from Jake English's Page of Hope abilities) to turn the altered session into the Alpha session, and prevent Caliborn from ever existing. This plan failed spectacularly and Aranea died to never be seen again. Vriska and Meenah were left despondent after Aranea's betrayal and eventually lose interest in their plans to kill , largely due to the loss if their most powerful psychic. Following the retcon, it appears that Vriska never met her dancestor, or at the very least, never formed any significant bond with her. Jake English Vriska treats Jake similarly to show she treats Tavros. She is rude towards him, calling him "Joke" or "Jape", often insulting him and comparing him to Tavros. It is of note that Tavros and Jake are both Pages in Sburb. After she successfully gets him to create Gcatavrosprite, she claims him to be , though this is most likely due to him going along with her ideas. Interestingly, Vriska treats Jake similarly to how she treated Jade before she godtiered. Arquiusprite Following the events of the retcon, Vriska grows to be very infatuated with Arquiusprite, treating him similarly to how Dave and most other characters regard WV. Other Characters She has almost no relationship whatsoever with Sollux, Vriska just greets him with childish taunts. Since she used him to kill Aradia, Sollux wants nothing to do with her. Similarly, she has almost no relationship with Gamzee although she found it a little cute that Gamzee was scared of her and honest about it. Her relationship with Feferi seems to be one of a loose kinship. They tease each other and Vriska is actually impressed by her cleverness every so often. It is possible that she calls Feferi awesome because of her upbeat personality despite the fact she had a similar but less unfortunate fate of feeding her lusus. She has little interest in interacting with Rose, finding her demeanor and sarcasm somewhat off-putting. During the post-retcon meteor trip, Vriska naturally became the leader of the group and was largely responsible for getting Rose to quit drinking. Rose describes Vriska as an incredible bitch but a necessary one. During the events of the B1 session, Vriska viewed Jade as useless and a liability to her group, treating her similarly to how Karkat did. Jade was a constant victim of Vriska's mental abilities with Vriska being largely responsibly for Jade's apparent narcolepsy. She compared Jade to Tavros: unintelligent and aggravatingly passive. However, Vriska does admit that Jade's refusal of Tavros' advances was admirable. Vriska's view on Jade becomes more neutral after the three year trip, instead starting to view her as a threat due to the combination of Jade's first guardian abilities and mental vulnerability to the Condesce's mind control abilities. Trivia *Her action of blinding Terezi fits with her role as a literal Thief of Light . *Her role as a Thief may be an ironic reference to the Eighth Commandment, which is "Thou shalt not steal". *According to Chinese culture, wearing red shoes is said to bring good luck. This may tie with Vriska's love for red footwear and her role as one who "steals" luck. **In addition to this, 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture, relating to prosperity and wealth, fitting in with Vriska's great fortune. *Some of Vriska's theme songs have names based on the Chrysanthemum flower, which is the representative flower for Scorpio, her zodiac sign. **The Chrysanthemum flower is also the national flower of Japan, which is also known as the Land of the Rising Sun, tying in with her Light aspect. *Vriska having blue blood may be an allusion to spiders and scorpions, which have blue "blood", or Hemolymph. *Vriska's injuries equate to precisely half of what she caused to other players: losing one eye (to Terezi's two), one limb (to Tavros's two) and dying in the old timeline (to Aradia and Tavros' deaths). *The pattern on Vriska's god tier wings mirrors her eyes, with one having one large dot and the other having seven smaller ones. **Vriska's eightfold eye is shaped like an asterisk, which is located on the 8 key of a keyboard. Also, "asterisk" contains 8 letters. *Both Tavros and John, whom Vriska seemed to have had flushed feelings for, were Heroes of Breath. Oxygen (relating to Breath) is the 8th element, with 8 protons, 8 neutrons, and 8 electrons. *Vriska is depicted on "XVI: The Tower" as well on the "King of Swords" (with the rest of the red team) card in the Homestuck tarot deck. She is featured on the "Eight of Swords" card as well, and is also on the "Five of Wands" card with most of the pre-act six cast. **Her appearance on the Tower, a card that can be interpreted as a moment in which everything changes, references the multiple diverging timelines caused by her mortality. *Vriska's exile, , uses a lance - the same weapon Tavros Nitram uses. Inversely, Hearts Boxcars, Tavros' exile, uses dice, Vriska's weapon of choice. *Even though she considers Union Jack as a threat, Vriska enabled his ascension by not preventing it with time travel. **This proves to be crucial to the main timeline, however, as his defeat brought Caliborn's denizen and Gamzee to future Earth. *As featured and introduced , Vriska has an Instagram account. ru:Вриска Серкет Category:Homestuck characters Category:Trolls Category:Blue bloods Category:Sprite components